When my kids were little, before we would enter a restaurant or a store, we would talk about things we needed to remember to make it a good experience. Not only for us, but for the people that were about to encounter five little kids entering their place of business. (Don’t think I don’t see you playing ‘rock, paper, scissors’ for the poor soul that is going to get our table!)
But, “Lady whose scissors just got crushed by the rock”, let me tell you…it’s gonna be alright. You may have just won the grand prize of “Table for Seven”, but don’t you worry because I just helped you out when we were in the parking lot coming up with things like… sitting on our bottoms, looking you in the eyes, and ordering our food in a voice that you can hear. If we have something in our nose, we are going to leave it in our nose. You just watch! We are going to push in our chairs and we are NOT going to leave gross things for you to clean up. We’ve got this!
But one day, as we sat in the van getting ready to go into a store, I turned around in my seat and asked the kids what were some of the things we would ‘do’ and ‘not do’ when we went in.
They rattled off ‘no yelling’ and ‘say please and thank you’ and then four year-old Kate said, “Don’t kick the people!”
Oh, how we laughed! And though it seemed obvious, what a good thing to remember!
As we enter a weekend full of shopping and crowded stores, my daughter’s little voice echoes in my mind. We will see many stressed out shoppers and clerks and even though my four year-old really did mean that we should not ‘right roundhouse’ someone in the shin, there are so many other ways that we often times ‘kick the people’.
We’re in a rush and we don’t have time for someone to make a mistake. We take the closest parking spot and we don’t take the time to hold the door for the person behind us. We fail to remember that the clerk is a real person and a simple and genuine, ‘How are you?” can mean so much. We see a young mother with restless children and judge her without knowing her situation. We grumble about lines and prices when the person behind us worries if they’ll have enough money to pay for supper, let alone gifts for their kids. We honk at the ‘old lady’ in front of us because she drives too slow.
I wonder if we will ever be ‘old and slow’? Will there ever be a time when we are just one paycheck away from not having enough to provide for our family? Do we ever make a mistake at our own jobs? Are we thankful there isn’t a line of ten people to tell us how we could do it better? None of us really know what is going on in another person’s day, a person’s life, and all too often we don’t really care because we’re just worried about our own.
This holiday season, I encourage you to slow down and really SEE the people around you. What do they need? That gentleman that sits alone in the booth, thinks he’s invisible to most. Smile at him. That girl that seems nervous about running the register for the first time…really IS nervous. Tell her she did a great job!
Enjoy this time of year and as we run around crossing things off our lists, please remember to show some grace and…don’t kick the people.
Wonderfully written reminder during this wonderful season of compassion.